digging through my photography files I found these beautiful backgrounds from the AMBLIMATION animated feature film BALTO, except the last one all painted in oil by LUC DESMARCHELIER, one of the master-painters. it’s the year 1993, london. we decided to paint most of the BG’s in oil after painted snow tests in gouache were not looking like snow. only some wooden textured house shots and a few interiors were painted in gouache. it was hard for most of the background painters to get more familiar with this unusual painting technique in animation. after disney’s BAMBI BALTO was the second feature film painted in oil.

now that I got most of my favorite animated films in blu-ray I realized with pain I probably have to redo most of my recreated backgrounds. they were all done with screen captures from DVD’s. you can see in the recreated BG from disney’s SLEEPING BEAUTY below the big difference, so much more detail and it nearly looks like the original artwork in front of you. blu-ray even reveals sloppy jobs or painting mistakes once in a while. this forest BG might not exist like that in the disney archives, because it was painted in 3 different layers, a masterpiece! I am sure it was painted by EYVIND EARLE himself.

ABOUT ME

my name is hans bacher, – I work as production designer in the animation film industry. for the last 40 years I lived and worked in duesseldorf, london, paris, los angeles, manila and tokyo. now I am professor for film-design at the nanyang techn. university in singapore.